Author: Abigail Morici

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May the Force Be With Memphis

Brian Spiker and Terry Ryan of Lost Cantina Toy Store (Credit: Abigail Morici)

Thanks to Terry Ryan and Brian Spiker, Memphis now has its very own cantina, straight out of the Star Wars universe. If you aren’t familiar with cantinas, Wookieepedia (yes, Wookieepedia) defines cantinas as a sort of pub where drunk and disorderly galactic patrons could socialize and, of course, engage in some illicit, criminal activity. But unlike the cantinas in the Star Wars universe, Ryan and Spiker’s cantina — the Lost Cantina Toy Store — is far from being a hotbed of seedy pursuits. 

Inside, action figures, lightsabers, character helmets, Millennium Falcon replicas, and other Star Wars memorabilia adorn every shelf and wall, with no space left untouched — even the bathroom has Star Wars-themed wallpaper. Most of the items for sale are 25 years or older, and all of the items come from Ryan’s and Spiker’s personal collections. “We didn’t have to spend anything on inventory,” says Ryan.

“The bulk of what you see is my collection, starting from ’95,” Spiker adds. “I’d say this is about a third of it. My wife did not like it all in the house, and it found its way to several storage units that I was tired of paying rent on.”

A stormtrooper, BB-8, and Greedo (who totally did not shoot first) (Credit: Abigail Morici)

Spiker’s love of Star Wars began when he was around 8 years old, when the first movies came out. “As a child, there were always these toys I wanted, but my parents only bought me what they thought I needed,” he says. “But when I had a job of my own and my own income, I just started collecting the stuff I always dreamed about collecting as a child. Then it just got out of control.

“I had a route that I could take down through Mississippi,” Spiker continues, “and I could hit 12 Walmarts in one day. I’d start at about 4 a.m. when they would start putting the toys out when I knew that new-release stuff was coming out. I would get done by about 8 at night.”

To toy collectors, Ryan explains, the fun is in finding the items. “Big collectors call it hunting — you got out hunting for the day,” he says. “It’s a chance to be a kid at heart, I guess. Reliving childhood — reliving that feeling you get when you see Star Wars stuff.”

After meeting through work, Ryan and Spiker realized that they shared the same passion in Star Wars and collecting — their friendship was natural. Years later, after attending a convention in Nashville together, Ryan proposed the idea of the toy store to Spiker, and eventually, Spiker, as he says, “gave in.”

“At least here, I can look at [my collection] as opposed to storing it in a storage unit and never seeing it,” Spiker says. “We’ve been enjoying talking to other collectors in town about their collections and having them come in to buy some of the stuff that we have. … It’s a hobby store for us; we’re hoping to make some money, but that’s not our primary objective.”

A small selection of the collection at the Lost Cantina Toy Store (Credit: Abigail Morici)

Items can cost anywhere from $4 to $2500, so there’s something for every budget and for Star Wars enthusiasts of any age, not just collectors. “These toys are meant to be played with,” Ryan says. “I had a kid bring in two tupperware canisters full of toys, and lay them all out on the table just to show me his collection. Guys like Brian and I, we’ll save them in a box.” But that doesn’t mean they expect everyone to do the same — especially kids.

Even Spiker, a self-proclaimed “avid do-not-open-it toy collector,” has been indulging in opening some of the boxes. “I’m like, oh wait, I’ve never opened that one before, so it’s been fun for me to finally open some of these toys that I’ve had for 25 years — that I forgot I even had.”

The co-owners agree that being able to enjoy and share their passion with other collectors and Star Wars fans has been the most rewarding part of opening their store. “It’s a way for me to kind of escape into a mindset of a kid when reality is bearing down on you,” Ryan says.

“I think that appreciating the original movies and understanding the difference between the dark side and the light side, the Force, the good and evil of it,” Spiker says, “I think it gives you some grounding in your morals and values, that good can win over evil, that there is hope. … We need more of that in the world.”

Open Saturdays and Sundays at 9 a.m.-5 p.m., the Lost Cantina Toy Store is located at 620 S. Bellevue, on the corner of Bellevue and Harbert, across from the Checkers.

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Art Art Feature

Little Fires Everywhere: Raina Belleau’s “Enchanted Forest Fire”

Portrait of the Artist as a Sportsman, 2019 (Photo: Abigail Morici)

“Fire Danger Today! Prevent Wildfires,” alerts the sign at the entrance of the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College. In lieu of rating the day’s level of fire danger from low to extreme, this sign carries the message: “I don’t want to talk about it.” Alternative plaques say, “Gestures broadly at everything” or “Well, it’s been worse.”

Raina Belleau, a professor at Rhodes, considers this piece, entitled Fire Danger, to be a pillar of her exhibition, “Enchanted Forest Fire,” through which she reflects on her climate anxiety. The messages on the plaques, she says, “are directly pulled from everyday phrases when we want to tell other people what a situation is like without causing alarm. These signs are scattered throughout the gallery to show that we’ve gone through these phases of denial or false reassurance [about climate change and environmental issues], and we are now in a place where we no longer lack the knowledge to have the conversation that needs to happen.” Instead, she suggests, we are unable to cope with our fears and realizations; we feel static, stuck between the choice to take accountability for the impacts of climate change we have caused as humans or to ignore them.

“One of the ways that I approach that sense of anxiety in the exhibition is through humor,” Belleau says. “I think humor is a way to open up some of these heavier subjects for discussion to acknowledge that there are feelings shared among a lot of different people in a lot of different places.” As such, Belleau took notes from some of the most widely familiar interpretations of nature — cartoons and fairy tales. “Like Disney, the way they use animal characters in children’s movies to elicit emotional responses.”

But unlike the classic Disneyfied, fairy-tale Enchanted Forest, the animals who inhabit Belleau’s exhibition are under a severe distress that evinces itself physically, distorting their bodily forms. The polar bear wears jeans, cuffed above his human ankles and two left human feet; he has no eyes, only sockets through which a disco-ball interior reflects light. The raccoon stares at her hand with eyes that swirl hypnotically and glow under black light as if under a drug-induced trance. A life-sized bear sits in a lawn chair, with crumpled silver cans lying around his feet, as exaggerated tears well up in his strained, cartoonish eyes. “He’s having a moment where he doesn’t know how to feel the emotions he’s having,” Belleau says. “He may be indulging in some less-than-healthy coping mechanisms.”

To sculpt the forms of these animals, Belleau turned to her preferred medium of found objects, particularly ones that are difficult to recycle, like single-use styrofoam coolers or the air packets that come in online shipping orders. However, unlike her usual style where these objects are recognizable — where the viewer can recognize that leaves, for instance, are made out of recycled plastic bags — these animals hide their recycled interior. “It was important for them to have some of that artificiality, like a cartoon character would, and not show what they are made of,” she says. “It’s been important for the work to reflect some of my personal commitments. That doesn’t necessarily have to be seen by the viewer, but that act is embedded in their cores quite literally.”

“There’s an element of escapism in movies, stories,” Belleau continues. “I think that visiting an art exhibition is also a form of escapism, but letting you enter this realm of the unreal or the imagined will never let you fully let go of what’s happening in the real world.”

“Enchanted Forest Fire” is on display at the Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College until October 16th. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. Vaccines and masks are required.

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Art Art Feature

Colossal Collaboration: Nisa Williams and Theo James Bring Their Artistry to the Coliseum

Theo James and Nisa Williams (Photo: Jamie Harmon)

The Mid-South Coliseum, Memphis’ first racially integrated facility, once host to concerts, basketball games, graduations, and more, has been closed to the public since 2006. This summer, the Coliseum Coalition, which has been advocating for the Coliseum’s revitalization, commissioned Nisa Williams, a Crosstown High School senior, and her father, Theo James, a textile and graphic artist, to add visual appeal to the landmark’s exterior.

Within two months, Williams and James painted six 15-by-15-foot panels that illustrate Memphis values, with Otis Redding captioned as representing culture, Larry Finch as talent, Justice Constance Baker Motley as justice, a grad in cap and gown as community, Unapologetic as passion, and three children with a globe in their hand as imagination. The father-daughter duo finished the paintings in early August. I recently spoke with them about their project.

Memphis Flyer: How would y’all describe your process?

Nisa Williams: The words were given to us, like prompts, from the coalition. We had a little more freedom of who we wanted to portray. We were given a list of names, and we were also told we could do our own research on what provokes us.

Theo James: After we decided what we were going to do, Nisa and I bashed around the idea of sticking to a graphic style. We didn’t want to go for a photorealistic look because we wanted it to be punchy from a distance.

NW: We just got started doing stuff. I’d start painting in one area, and then he would do another, and it kinda just came together. I think I served the most in concept sketches and making sure that the framework of the murals, as soon as we started painting, was correct.

TJ: Yeah, she was the one that organized how we were going about doing it. I was impressed with what she was capable of doing. There’s some difficulty in translating a screen-size thumbnail into a 15-by-15-foot panel. I think I would’ve had a lot more difficulty without her. I felt that we had an eye-to-eye approach.

What was it like to work together as father and daughter?

TJ: For me, it’s probably the most flattering thing a parent can feel. I didn’t twist Nisa’s arm; she got into art on her own. She started doing little rudimentary things and then it went from there, like people discovering fire to the internet, with her. She has a style already. I know it’s her stuff when I see it, and I’m amazed by it. I’m self-taught. Nisa — she’s taught herself a lot — but she’s had the benefit of good high school art classes. I’ve actually learned a lot from her.

NW: I appreciate that a lot. You can ask him, I’m not really good at receiving compliments. He’s a really talented artist with a notable style. I learned a lot of techniques and more professional and streamlined ways to problem-solve and how to appeal to clients. I think a lot of people underestimate how influential he is in the city, and I think it’s cool that anybody can provoke you through art or make you think about something. That’s a hard thing to do.

What do you hope this project will provoke in onlookers?

NW: We wanted to get people to inquire about the space and what’s happening to it. A lot of the composition has references to the people embodied in the picture. It functions almost as a timeline of the Coliseum.

TJ: Every one of the people portrayed had a piece of history that happened at that location. You can’t live in Memphis without having a story about the Coliseum. You went there to see a show or you went there to graduate. This is a place that has history with a community already connected to it, a place that shouldn’t be demolished. It’s a large space where there’s so much potential. We have to have a place that people can bond over, a place that’s central.

NW: A place to have a collective experience.

TJ: Yeah, I think that’s how a city gets its identity.

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Art Art Feature

The Art of Healing

Photo: Brian Manning

Amid the gray, rainy city of London, fashion student and Memphis native Kris Keys found herself in an indescribable pain. A gallbladder attack, the doctors told her, triggered by hereditary elliptocytosis — a rare blood disorder that Keys was diagnosed with as a baby.

Searching for a way to heal, Keys turned to research. She contacted St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she was treated as a child, and got a hold of slides of her blood cells and the blood tests doctors performed on Keys’ older relatives.

Soon, those organic, elliptical blood cells that Keys observed spread across her illustrations as she replicated the deep reds and purples with watercolors. It was cathartic to see her disorder on paper and later on fabric in her 2019 womenswear collection, “Hematology.” “Using my pain as an artist was my way to heal,” she says. “One thing that shifted my mindset of having an illness was pushing it into an art space.”

Kris Keys uses watercolors to heal and understand her pain, passed down by the generations before her. (Photo: Brian Manning)

After returning to Memphis and releasing “Hematology,” Keys says, she started hearing from people around the world who shared the blood disorder, and she knew she hadn’t finished her research. The disorder is genetic, affects one in every 3,000 to 5,000 people in the U.S., and mostly affects people of African-American and Mediterranean descent. “I wondered, how can this be resolved?” Keys says. “How can we avoid continuing this pattern?” She wanted to find the genesis of her disorder, so she started tracing her lineage and listening to her older relatives’ stories.

“I still haven’t found the origins of the disorder,” she says, but the stories she did find have offered her insights into her identity. “There’re so many reasons why we act the way we act. A lot times it comes from our ancestry. There’re these streams of things that lead back to slavery. I never realized how much slavery affected DNA. I started seeing patterns in my relationships, my friendships that I really couldn’t get a grasp on until I started to sit down and think about where these patterns are coming from. Like, oh, this is coming from my grandfather or my great-grandfather.

“Sometimes,” Keys continues, “the patterns help us to be stronger, but sometimes they work against our purpose.” Her most recent collection, “Genealogy,” explores this connection between ancestral patterns and the opportunity for healing. Unlike the mysterious and dark violets and reds of her first collection, this collection features flowers in dusty yellows and earthy tones, light colors that reflect the enlightenment Keys has found in uncovering her family’s stories.

Photo: Brian Manning

“Flowers have these healing properties,” Keys says of the floral motif. “I thought, what natural resources do I have around me, and what did my ancestors have?” During her travels, Keys noticed wildflowers, daffodils, and elderberry and magnolia flowers growing around her relatives’ homes, and the inspiration took root and blossomed with the help of her choice medium of watercolors.

“Watercolors are one of the only mediums of painting that you have to completely surrender,” says Keys. “You can’t control where it goes. You put the paint down, and it kinda flows where it wants to even if you have an idea of where you want it to go. I relate that to life. You can have an idea of what you want your life to be, but you have to surrender to your story and make beauty out of what you have.” She adds, “To really live a life that’s magical and purposeful and that’s gonna make an impact, we have to learn where we’ve been and how we got there.”

Keys unveiled “Genealogy” with a virtual exhibition on September 7th. The exhibition, still accessible on her website, features watercolor paintings, accompanied by videos that explain the story behind each piece. Within a year or so, these paintings will be turned into a patterned fabric for womenswear that emphasizes comfort and style for the traveling woman.

To register for the exhibition and for more information, visit bykriskeys.com or @bykriskeys on Instagram.

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Art Art Feature

Art Exhibition: Pick a Card

Selections from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

Mason jars, alligators, pine cones, and black-eyed peas are just some of the images on the oracle cards in Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” deck. The cards, 45 in total, are all illustrated with acrylic paintings, representing different aspects of Southern culture and history. Around 20 of the original paintings are on display at Jay Etkin Gallery. 

Oracle cards are similar to tarot cards, Williams-Ng explains, “but they’re more open-ended.” While tarot cards typically have standard symbols in every deck that require prior knowledge to interpret the images, oracle decks can contain a myriad of images, usually appealing to a theme, and each card contains a clear, written affirmation or piece of advice, with no prior knowledge necessary.

For instance, in Williams-Ng’s deck, she says, “If you pull the copperhead card, it’s supposed to be warning against bad influences,” but it’s up to the user to interpret who or what those bad influences are. “Today, people who consume these kinds of cards are more likely to use tarot or oracle cards as their own self-help tool,” she adds. “They’ll draw cards and just read them and think about what it might mean to their own lives. People are seeing tarot [and oracle] cards as something that is for their own personal betterment, instead of ‘Oh, I’m gonna find out if my boyfriend is going to marry me or if I’m going to die this year.’”

Selections from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

Williams-Ng originated the images and interpretations of her oracle cards. She had been looking for a deck with a Southern theme but couldn’t find one; fortunately, she says, “I liked the idea of creating a card deck where I could define what the cards are.” So, at the end of last year, she began brainstorming and painting. 

“It was kind of a pandemic project for me,” she says. “I had just moved back to my hometown [Memphis from Milwaukee], and I was stuck in the house and started thinking about things that interest me on a personal level.” For the past decade, Williams-Ng says, she has been researching the different spiritual practices and belief systems throughout the South. 

We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems.

“I wanted my deck of cards to represent overlapping spiritual traditions,” she says. From Christianity to Hoodoo to Celtic and Appalachian beliefs, she explains, spiritual systems in the South often share a lot of regional traditions and beliefs. (Though, in this deck, she omitted belief systems from Louisiana because “Louisiana is a world unto itself.”) “Of the 45 cards, there’s only five to six cards of any one thing, and that way there’s a real diversity. We come from a really diverse region, so there’s a real diversity of belief systems, and that way the user or reader gets presented with a democratic smattering of different ideas.” 

Stacey Williams-Ng (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

The title of the deck, as well as the Jay Etkin exhibition, was inspired by the Southern Gothic literary movement in the 19th century. “[The Southern Gothic writers] were trying to show the way the South was hiding beneath this veneer of civility, but beneath it there was all kinds of trauma,” Williams-Ng says. “Not everything in my deck is an affirmation; you know, these cards have some shadow things, like the copperhead card. … I wanted to give people a sense of another side of the South — the more grotesque or esoteric or metaphysical side of the South — the shadow side.” 

Even so, Williams-Ng hopes her cards provide joy and inspiration. “More and more people are trying to figure out how they can get in touch with their own local magic, if you will, or their own local traditions,” she says. “And as for people who are dabbling in witchcraft and the occult and even in just botanical healing practices and things like that, they are really trying to work with the authenticity of working with the land, meaning working with [the traditions and spiritual practices] where you’re from.”

One card that Williams-Ng thinks will enchant Memphians is the Crystal Grotto card, which is based on the Crystal Shrine Grotto at Memorial Park Cemetery in East Memphis. The image on the card is non-specific, labelled simply as a crystal grotto, but anyone who has seen the Crystal Shrine Grotto will recognize the inspiration. As for the card’s meaning, Williams-Ng says, “It represents the cosmos and getting in touch with the universe. It’s about ancient wisdom.” 

A selection from Stacey Williams-Ng’s “Southern Gothic Oracle” (Courtesy Stacey Williams-Ng)

This unique attention to regional detail in Williams-Ng’s deck has attracted a great deal of interest in customers wanting their own, especially after she launched a successful Kickstarter campaign. “I never expected it to have any commercial success. I’ve sold a thousand decks, and I just can’t believe this. It’s clearly hitting a nerve with some people,” she says. “I’ve had a lot of people evoke their grandmothers. There’s a lot of ‘This reminds me of my Memaw, this reminds me of going to my grandma’s house.’”

The opening reception of “Southern Gothic Oracle” at Jay Etkin Gallery is Friday, September 3rd, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. There will be card readings, and decks of cards accompanied by books for interpretations will be on sale. The exhibition will remain on display until October 2nd.  To purchase a deck of cards, visit Williams-Ng’s Etsy store.

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Students Get Involved in Memphis Public Libraries

Zahra Chowdhury, a Pleasant View School senior on the Benjamin Hooks Branch Council (Courtesy Zahra Chowdhury)

This summer, Memphis Public Libraries (MPL) has partnered with BRIDGES to assemble the Comeback Stronger Youth Councils, as part of an initiative to boost teen engagement and expand libraries’ teen programming. The councils consist of middle and high school students, who represent five branches: Benjamin L. Hooks, North, Poplar-White Station, Raleigh, and South. 

“We wanted to have a group of young people who could speak for themselves as to what they wanted to have in those [teen-specific] spaces,” says Terrice Thomas, manager of South Branch Library. “We looked for applicants with leadership experience or leadership potential, willingness to be engaged in their community, and willingness to be outspoken and talk to people.” With this goal in mind, MPL reached out to the BRIDGES Youth Action Center, an organization already creating authentic youth leadership opportunities in Memphis. 

“BRIDGES believes that youth have the answers,” says Mahal Burr, BRIDGES Youth Action Center director. “When adults intentionally seek young people’s perspectives in efforts to shape the city’s future, we create a more inclusive community. Youth-adult equity in decision-making spaces like our public library system also ensures the decisions we make that directly affect the lives of youth are better informed and more effective.”

Burr continues, “We are currently in the process of supporting the piloting of the Comeback Stronger Youth Councils’ in five branches but will be supporting the expansion of these councils to all branches within the next three years. … Youth who are involved in the Comeback Stronger Youth Councils will benefit from stronger libraries that better serve them.”

(Credit: Terrice Thomas)

The pilot cohort of 22 students has met weekly since June to discuss how the libraries can better support young people. They facilitated their own meetings with minimal intervention from library and BRIDGES staff, collected data from their communities about community needs and perception of the library system, and each council member received a stipend for their work. All of this effort culminated on August 5th in a presentation to the library staff, board, and funders. The students recommended solutions to a range of priorities, including transportation access, mental health services, community violence education, and financial literacy and career planning programs. A summary report can be found here. 

Zahra Chowdhury, a Pleasant View School senior on the Benjamin Hooks Branch Council, says that her branch looked to improve intergenerational engagement through social media, adult-equity training, and youth-centered programming and spaces. “The libraries already have a wide range of programming and resources, but most young people don’t know or have never heard of them because they aren’t being actively advertised on the platforms youth use,” she says. The council also suggested that MPL host library tours and scavenger hunts to show “how libraries are more than just books,” not to mention how all the library’s programming and resources are free.

The Ben Hooks council, Chowdhury continues, also recommended programming around mental health through meditation and yoga classes or self-care and mindfulness journals, as well as educational support through ACT/SAT prep courses, peer tutoring, and a teen book club with discussions led by youth on books recommended by youth.

“We are still waiting to hear back from [administration] about feedback and what requests they can fulfill,” she adds, “but it was an amazing opportunity just to present to them and get their ideas on what the library needs to better engage young people.”

Thomas says that the administration is looking forward to bringing to fruition as many of the councils’ ideas as possible. Already, MPL is helping the Raleigh council with their initiative to have a block party this fall. “It’s great to see that the library is the opposite of what [the students] thought it was,” Thomas says. “Before they might’ve been like, ‘Oh, I thought the library was a place that wasn’t really for me, that people would be shushing me.’ But no, we want you here and we want you to be heard and express yourself.”

“Too often are young people offered a seat at the table but their voices go unheard or completely ignored,” Chowdhury says. “That’s why I am so grateful and appreciative that the MPL staff working with the youth council has continuously upheld the principles of youth and adult equity and are truly listening to what young people have to say.”

The end of the month marks the end of the pilot group’s term. MPL will start recruiting and interviewing for the next group of council members in September. This group will meet twice a month and will serve for the duration of the school year. To apply, students can go to memphislibrary.org. 

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Art Art Feature

Sugar Rush: Two Sweet Exhibitions on View at the Dixon

Watermelon and Knife by Wayne Thiebaud (Photo: Artist Rights Society)

The Dixon Gallery & Gardens teases your sweet tooth with its most recent exhibitions: “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” and “Piece of Cake: Confectious Sculptures by Greely Myatt.”

The former features 100 works by Wayne Thiebaud in honor of his 100th birthday, which he celebrated in November 2020. The exhibition looks at the entirety of the artist’s career, starting with his earliest works right after World War II and ending with his latest series from 2016 to 2020.

Thiebaud’s subjects vary from landscapes to figure paintings, but he is most known for his 1960s paintings of cakes, pies, and other sweet treats. “A lot of times his paintings are inspired by the food displays you might’ve seen at a typical American diner in the middle of the 20th century,” says Julie Pierotti, the Martha R. Robinson curator at the Dixon. “So they have this kind of nostalgia to them for us looking at them today — nostalgia for the diner culture of decades ago.” Critics of the time referred to Thiebaud as the “Walt Whitman of the Delicatessen.”

“You don’t have to have any art history knowledge to come in and look at his work, appreciate it, enjoy it, and learn something,” Pierotti adds. “These are subjects like two ice cream cones that are so a part of our life and our culture that anyone can look at them and smile.

“The humor in them is so deadpan, yet it’s quietly dramatic,” she continues. “They speak to something inside of us that is like a guilty pleasure; you have this bodily reaction to it, in your heart and in your gut.” Thiebaud painted in the same manner a baker would frost a cake, with thick coats of paint that make the viewer want to scrape off a bit with their fingers.

Greely Myatt wanted to capture this kind of bodily reaction in his sculptures for the “Piece of Cake” exhibition, also at the Dixon. Just as Thiebaud applied thick layers of paint, Myatt applied layers of brown caulking as the chocolate icing on top of cakes made of wood. The caulking oozes between the layers and drips down the sides. “It’s really gooey and rich,” he says. “You wanna make it look lush, so people wanna lick it rather than just look at it.”

Myatt made his first cake sculpture with 54 layers to celebrate his 54th birthday in 2006. After that, he began making cakes and other sweet treats as gifts to celebrate his friends’ milestones and birthdays — gifts that friends like gallery-owner David Lusk and Metal Museum executive director Carissa Hussong have loaned to the Dixon for this exhibition. “I never thought I’d put these pieces in a show,” he says. “I made them because it was my birthday or David’s birthday, and I thought it was funny to make these things you couldn’t eat.”

When asked if Thiebaud inspired his confectious sculptures, Myatt says that, as an art professor at University of Memphis for 30 years, he was aware of Thiebaud, but Thiebaud was not why he made these pieces. Rather, the connection between the two occurred serendipitously. “A lot of my work references other art,” he says. “I grew up in Mississippi, where there weren’t a whole lot of art museums or galleries. So my connection with art was not with the high art — modernism — until I went to school. It was sort of a collision between the vernacular art that I grew up with and the art with historical references.”

But for one cake in this exhibition, the connection between the two artists was intentional. In honor of the Thiebaud exhibit and his 100th birthday, Myatt sculpted a 100-layer cake that towers 8 feet and sits right next to Myatt’s 54-layer cake — “Wayne and I,” he titles it.

The two exhibitions are playful and clever. But as Myatt says, “Humor is a serious form of art. It’s a skill.” And it’s a skill that both Wayne Thiebaud and Greely Myatt possess.

“Piece of Cake: Confectious Sculptures by Greely Myatt” is on view at the Dixon until September 26th. “Wayne Thiebaud 100: Paintings, Prints, and Drawings” is on view until October 3rd.

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News News Blog

Free Birth Control Delivery Expanding to Tennessee

Dr. Sophia Yen with a patient (Photo courtesy Pandia Health)

Pandia Health, an online birth control delivery service, has just expanded to Tennessee. The women-founded, women-led, and doctor-led company offers free delivery for the patch, the pill, and the ring. All that’s needed is an active prescription, plus no copay with insurance or as low as $15 per pack without insurance.

For those who need a new prescription, Pandia also has a team of medical doctors, who can prescribe birth control and answer any follow-up questions for a $20 yearly fee. In this case, the patient provides a few documents (like a government ID and health insurance card) and fills out a 20-question questionnaire that asks about health history and concerns, and a doctor will prescribe the birth control that best fits the patient’s profile. (In Tennessee, anyone of any age, including minors, can consent to the prevention of pregnancy through contraception.)

While the prescription service is asynchronous, without a doctor-patient face-to-face interaction, CEO and founder Dr. Sophia Yen assures that it is safe, though it does not replace regular doctor visits and check-ups. As a doctor-led company, she says, Pandia is HIPAA-compliant, implements only evidence-based and science-backed practices, and keeps up with all the latest research. “American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which is the number-one trusted national organization of OB-GYNs, has stated that birth control is safe and should go over the counter, and women can decide if it’s okay for them, given these 20 questions,” she adds. “So we’ve taken these 20 questions, turned it into a questionnaire, and added a protective layer of a doctor’s oversight looking at your questionnaire plus your medical history.”

Dr. Sophia Yen(Photo courtesy Pandia Health)

Yen, who also lectures as a clinical associate professor at Stanford Medical School, says, “One of the top reasons that women don’t take their birth control is that they don’t have it in their hand.” And this fact inspired her to found Pandia in 2016 with friends Perla Ni and Elliott Blatt to combat what she has coined “pill anxiety,” the anxiety that arises when someone runs out of their birth control without the next packet in hand. “We thought, we’ll just ship women their birth control and keep shipping it until they tell us to stop.”

But birth control isn’t just about pregnancy prevention; it can also help with hormonal acne and regulate periods — two points that Pandia has expanded its mission to include. The company’s #PeriodsOptional campaign promotes awareness that periods can be intentionally skipped for an extended period of time through the use of birth control, as early as two years after a first period. “The number-one cause of missed school and work for women under age 25 is a bad, evil period,” Yen says, and so she views Pandia and its ability to regulate menstruation as an equalizer that can free those with uteri from menstrual pains and the inconveniences and worries that can come with a period. Also, according to Yen, going period-free can decrease the risk of endometriosis, PCOS, anemia, and ovarian and endometrial cancer among other positive side effects, although the effects of going period-free long-term have yet to be studied conclusively.

“We’re here to make women’s lives better,” Yen continues, “and we will only tell you what’s best for your health, even if it affects our bottom line.” 

For more information, visit pandiahealth.com. Pandia Health also offers educational material that is free and accessible to anyone via their online blog, YouTube, and Facebook.

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Art Art Feature

Pose 901 is Memphis’ Newest Selfie Studio

At Pose 901, guests become part of the art in each of the Memphis-curated sets. (Photo: Antoine Lever)

Pose 901, Memphis’ newest selfie studio, leaves no room to be camera-shy, with twelve uniquely Memphis sets, perfect for striking a pose and snapping a pic. The studio opened last month as a yearlong pop-up with sets that will rotate every three months or so.

Following the nationwide trend of selfie studios, co-owners Michalyn Easter-Thomas and Antoine Lever wanted to set their studio apart by incorporating Memphis culture and history in their set designs. “For example, we have our ‘Hustle and Flow’ set that is a tribute to all Black Memphis artists, throwback and current, so we have Black Moses and Isaac Hayes, all the way to Pooh Shiesty,” Easter-Thomas says. Other sets include a boxing ring with Memphis v. Errbody plastered on the wall, a recording studio complete with headphones and microphones to pose with, and a VIP booth that Lever claims as one of his favorites.

“We wanted to make sure it reflected Memphis through what it looked like but also through how it was curated,” Easter-Thomas adds. In fact, the co-owners, who met while at Christian Brothers University, commissioned Memphis-based designers for each of their sets. “Luxe Interiors by Keila V., Raphael Small [of RAPHDesignLLC], Evo’k Designs — those were the main three who designed over half of our sets,” she continues.

Photo: Dederick Blair

“Memphis tends to be behind in things that the rest of the nation is doing,” Lever says, so when Easter-Thomas presented him with the idea, “I was like hell yeah, I’m on board.” While Lever brings his experience as a photographer, Easter-Thomas, a Memphis City Council member, says, “I’m the one who just likes taking pictures, so I have the mindset of what Memphians might like.”

A self-proclaimed Millennial enthusiast, she assures, “This isn’t just a Millennial thing; we’re going all the way up to age 109.” As such, the studio plans to host family nights, so kids under the age of 10 can join in on the fun, and the studio will be available for party venues, hour-long group sessions, and professional photoshoots in addition to 45-minute individual sessions.

Plus, for those who plan to go solo, the studio has camera stands available, and employees are more than happy to snap a few shots. “We wouldn’t leave you out there,” Easter-Thomas says. “We’d even make sure you have the right angle.”

Photo: Malik tha Martian

“It’s a one-of-a-kind, dope, kind of like a hypnotizing experience,” she says of the new studio. “You can immerse yourself in the set and feel like you’re somewhere else. We have music in here, projectors, different things going on. You’re not gonna want to leave.”

Tickets are available to purchase online or at the door. The studio is open Thursdays-Sundays and is located in Whitehaven at the Southbrook Town Center. “A lot of good things are happening in Whitehaven,” Easter-Thomas says, “and we’re happy to add to it.”

For more information, visit pose901selfie.com and keep up with Pose’s Instagram page, where they will tease out future set designs.

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Art Art Feature

Divining History

“Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry” (Credit: Metal Museum)

Jewelry is about more than its aesthetic value or its monetary worth — it’s a form of expression, a form of empowerment; it carries an impact, a purpose. And “Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry,” one of the Metal Museum’s latest exhibits, captures that sentiment through its more than 80 jewelry pieces. 

“‘Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry’ illustrates that Black identity is not a monolith but a collection of experiences,” says Brooke Garcia, collections and exhibitions manager. “This exhibition centers the works and lives of over 25 jewelry artists to explore the diverse histories of jewelry creation and production in the Black Diaspora of the Americas.”

Sekou Ra, “Fluorite Brooch,” 2020. Fluorite, silver, mystic topaz. (Credit: Houston Cofield)

The exhibition is an expansion upon Chicago-based curator LaMar R. Gayles Jr.’s “Conjuring Black Histories in Jewelry,” which Gayles curated as a student at St. Olaf in Northfield, Minnesota. At a young age, Gayles became enthralled with his great-grandmother’s collection of jewelry by Black artists. “She would explain to me different social, historical values and morals,” he says in an interview with the Metal Museum. “I see myself being represented in her collection; I see myself captured when she talks about her jewelry.”

So at 13, Gayles asked himself: Who was the first Black jeweler? From there, he fell into a rabbit hole where he found no simple answers in his research, so the search for answers continued into his college studies, where he faced a lack of documentation and scholarship. “I feel that oftentimes when we look at marginalized groups through art, it’s very anecdotal, … a throw-them-a-bone kind of thing,” he says. “[Black Diasporic jewelry] is not a homogenized institute entity; instead, it’s a pluralistic set of practices.”

Coreen Simpson, “The Black Cameo,” 1990. Jet, brass, enamel. (Credit: Houston Cofield)

“Divine Legacies,” in turn, serves as a catalyst for expanding the scholarship and the canon. More names and legacies are out there to uncover, Gayles says. To him, the word divine in the exhibition’s title adds “some level of mysticism to our legacy and history in this exhibition where it’s not just the history of Black jewelry,” he says, “it’s divining that history out.”

“This exhibition provides a lot of information about jewelers that aren’t documented otherwise,” Garcia adds. “We hope that visitors walk away from this exhibition understanding that these jewelers are not only expressing themselves and their identities, but they are also part of the broader history of American jewelry.”

The pieces range from the 1940s through the present day. “The pieces I’m most excited about are those by Winifred Mason-Chenet,” Garcia says. Known for using biomorphic, or nature-inspired, forms and Voodoo symbols, Mason-Chenet operated a transnational jewelry practice, likely the first African-American woman to do so. 

Other artists include Arthur “Art” Smith, whom Mason-Chenet mentored and who is also often cited as the earliest practicing Black American jeweler; Russell Ferrell, who made his pieces out of found silver and spoons and forks in the ’80s and ’90s; Charnelle Holloway, the first Black woman to teach metalsmithing at a historically Black college; and Karen Joy, whose work is the most recent in the collection.

Winifred Mason Chenet, “Leaf Brooch,” c. 1940s-60s. Pewter, copper. (Credit: Houston Cofield)

“The museum hasn’t featured a group exhibition of Black metalsmiths since 2015’s ‘A Kind of Confession,’” Garcia says, “and it felt like the appropriate time to both focus on this community of makers again and internally explore how the museum was prioritizing BIPOC artists and curators in our exhibitions program.” 

Because of this collaboration with Gayles, the museum has received a Craft Research Fund grant from the Center for Craft to produce a catalog, which is still in production, and to film an interview with Gayles, which is now available on the museum’s YouTube channel.

“Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry” is on view at the Metal Museum until September 12th.

“Divine Legacies in Black Jewelry” (Credit: Metal Museum)